This time Bronco Mendenhall sang, with a little help from his friends, the BYU cheerleaders.

This time Bronco Mendenhall sang, with a little help from his friends, the BYU cheerleaders.

It was the annual National Kidney Foundation Golf Classic at The Country Club in Salt Lake and the "Rivalry for Charity."

You know, the one where the Utah and BYU football coaches recruit stacked teams for a friendly competition and the losing coach has to sing the other's school fight song afterwards. This marked the 20th year it's been going on.

Since Mendenhall and Utah's Kyle Whittingham became coaches of their respective schools three years ago, the singing tradition made famous by LaVell Edwards and Ron McBride sort of died. After Whittingham mostly read the words to the Cougar fight song three years ago, Mendenhall declined to suffer the indignity of singing the Utah fight song when his team lost the past two years.

However, after losing to Whittingham's team by six shots Monday, Mendendall, with a half dozen cheerleaders by his side, sang an altered version of Utah Man, ending with "until I get to the Y.," instead of "will be till I die."

Everyone had a good laugh, and Mendenhall tossed the Utah hat he was forced to wear back to the Utah table in front of the podium.

"It's something we have to do, no matter how silly we look," Mendenhall said. "We raised awareness for a good cause."

Whittingham said his team won "no thanks to me" and said it was "all about good recruiting." He added, "It was good fun today. It's a great opportunity to do something good for the foundation and the community."

Neither Whittingham nor Mendenhall is a very good golfer, and each tried to outdo the other in talking about how bad they were.

"It was brutal," said Whittingham. "I didn't think I could top last year's brutalness, but I did."

"On a scale of 1 to 10 in brutalness," it was a 10," responded Mendenhall of his play.

Whittingham only had two other players on his team, Gladstan pro Tracy Zobell and neighbor Jay Peery, which is usually an advantage in a scramble because players trade off hitting an extra shot. Former Ute golfer Dustin Pimm, who was on last year's winning team, was unable to make it. However, Whittingham said the fact that he was one of the ones hitting an extra shot made it less advantageous.

Although BYU was on the losing side of the Bronco vs. Kyle duel, a couple of Cougars were on the winning team in the real competition Monday.

Former BYU quarterback Robbie Bosco and former BYU associate athletic director Brian Santiago joined Brandon Pulsipher and Vaughn Pulsipher on the winning team with a 13-under-par 59.

They earned the right to play in the National Kidney Foundation championship at Pebble Beach in California next January.

Second place with a 61 went to Ryan Adams, Tyler Adams, Chance Allred and Seth Squires, while Dave Trimble, Jay Drew, Marty Harris and Matt Thompson finished third at 62.

The good news for Mendenhall's team losing to Whittingham's was this. Every year since he and Whittingham became coaches, the loser in the summer golf tournament has gone on to win the football game in the fall.

Mike Sorensen has covered sports at the Deseret News since 1979. He has covered golf his entire career and nearly every sport you can think of, but for the past 15 years his main beats have been college football and more ..